Tigers-Tarik Skubal arbitration standoff led to the exact outcome fans feared most

The 1 PM EST arbitration deadline on Thursday was hardly a deadline at all. While the majority of arb-eligible players did file and reach an agreement with their respective teams by that mark, more continued to trickle in far past it, and a few are still in limbo.

The Tigers settled with all of Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, Kerry Carpenter, Zach McKinstry, Casey Mize, Tyler Holton, and Will Vest, leaving Tarik Skubal, unsurprisingly, the last man standing.

All of baseball's eyes are on Skubal, the expected highest earner of this year's arb class. MLB Trade Rumors predicted he'll get $17.8 million, while Spotrac had $22.5 million, and the latter feels far more realistic. Anything over $19.75 million would make him the highest-earning arbitration-eligible starting pitcher ever (David Price set that bar in 2015).

But Jeff Passan theorized that he could make an argument for even more, writing that Skubal could tap into a "rarely used provision that allows players with more than five years of service time to compare themselves not only to past arbitration-eligible players but to everyone in baseball."

Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press wrote that "an agent familiar with the process" said Skubal could ask for $35 million, breaking Juan Soto's $31 million record set when he agreed with the Yankees in his last year of arbitration eligibility.

Just after 5 PM, Bob Nightengale reported that the two sides had not come to an agreement. They technically still can (most deadlines mean very little in baseball, clearly), but the Tigers are typically seen as a "file-and-trial" club. They present their numbers, and if the two sides can't agree, they take negotiations straight to the arbitration panel.

Tarik Skubal could be angling toward a record-breaking arbitration salary as Tigers' agreement remains in limbo

The Tigers already gave Greene and Torkelson a collective $2 million less than they were expected to make, but that isn't going to help anything if Skubal is indeed asking for $35 million. No doubt their own projections ran around that $20-22 million mark, not for a lack of recognition for what Skubal has done, but rather wishful thinking.

Tigers fans say that they should pony up and give him exactly what he wants. Arbitration hearings are sticky, and players almost never win, but in this case, Skubal very well could. He very well should. The last thing the Tigers want before going into his walk year is to publicly devalue and then engage in a low-grade legal battle with him, during which process they'll have to find some way to talk down his accomplishments as a back-to-back Cy Young winner.

The Tigers are set in their ways — oftentimes to their own detriment. If they can break out of them just one time, let it be by continuing to negotiate with Skubal and Scott Boras before they actually have to get to a hearing.

Is saving a few million dollars really worth jeopardizing your relationship with your homegrown two-time Cy Young winner, the face of your franchise, which would make an extension that much more impossible and make him even more eager to get to free agency and go to a team that will actually pay him what he's worth? No. Of course not.

This ends badly no matter how you shake it, and the Tigers must know that. It's hard to tell what hurts more, actually: if they don't know, or if they do and are still set on winning anyway.